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My summer just became unscheduled

But it’s still packed full of things to do. They just (at the moment) no longer exist on an actual time frame besides the general “must do”.

I met with my supervisor again this week to talk about taking time off this summer to work on my startup. And, now that we have charted the course for me to finish, he was feeling much better about allowing me to do so. In fact, he was feeling so much better about it, I no longer have to take vacation time for it – instead we’re going to look at it as an internship on entrepreneurship. So yay! This means I can still potentially take time off in the fall for when I get extremely stressed out (although it’d be nice if that didn’t happen this year).

It was also decided that I’d just come to the weekly research meetings if I wanted to (although I still plan on attending them for the next few weeks – my plan was to start taking the time off in the middle of July). And that we’d no longer have weekly one-on-one meetings. Instead, we’re now just going to schedule those meetings as needed.

The best part about this, is how much extra time it frees up in my schedule. My meeting with my supervisor ranges from really short to an hour but when you add in travel time to/from the university (and I live quite close) it can take up to an additional hour. Being able to spend those potentially two hours working is significant. And then when you add in my research meeting which is often two hours long (so three hours with travel). I could potentially be gaining up to five hours a week just by not attending those meetings. That’s huge.

Of course, with the lack of a schedule and very specific deadlines, I need to start figuring out how to actually plan out my days and make myself accountable so that I don’t end up just wasting the extra time and not making progress. And I know I’ll end up with still traveling to campus a fair amount in order to participate in startup activities and meet with the other members. And I want to continue writing, even just a bit, during my time off – because I knowI won’t be good at (or able to) write for eight hours a day in order to catch up after.